Discovering the Beauty of the Korean Countryside.

*Note, due to my sparse knowledge of Korean, I may have gotten some of the information wrong, but I’m pretty sure my recollections are correct to a certain extent* 

The IBTA YR1 class of 2014

Last week, our theatre class embarked on a trip to discover. I think that phrase is really able to encompass our experiences and our learnings throughout our time in Andong. We discovered a Korea and culture completely alien to what we are exposed to in our every day lives; We discovered friendships and more about each other and were able to foster relationships; We discovered a new type of theatre and dug well into its core; We discovered the beauty of Korea that we may have been blinded to in the past. 

We commenced our excursion on what seemed like a short, joyful road trip, trying to coordinate singing and guitar playing. In reality, it actually took us a plentiful 4-5 hours to arrive at our destination. When we arrived, I was astonished by the beauty of our surroundings: the echo of the crickets, the moonlit straw roofs of the hanoks and the freshness of the air. Our walk in the night and the morning further deepened what was for most of us our first traditional Korean experience. The pictures in this post should exhibit the beauty of our experiences. 

During our walk in the morning, Mrs. Moon informed us about a yearly festival that takes place in Andong. She told us how, the mask dancers used the environment - dancing around the trees and using the roads - to create performances for the many visitors that came to experience this culture. She formulated a picture of how people would set ablaze certain things from the mountain as ashes floated down from the mountain to our noses, then a show of fireworks. Unfortunately, this festival took place the week after we visited Andong. 

It's Choraengi (Joel) in the flesh! 

After our leisurely stroll in the village, we visited a few stores, bought some masks and set out for our lesson in (탈춤), a form of traditional Hahoe Korean mask dance. We first began with a lecture on the origins and the types of these dances. Talchum is the original form of masked dance in Korea. It was made to rid the village of evil spirits and a ritual for the Gods. The masked dancers all assemble in a line from the top of a mountain, and descend in a parade down to their area of performance (during special occasions in current time). All the characters within talchum resemble an aspect or prominence of village life. The eleven Hahoe masks are the two lions (Juji), butcher (Baekjeong), old widow (Halmi), the depraved monk (Chung), flirtatious young woman (Pune), nobleman (Yangban), scholar (Seonbi), bride (Gaksi), meddling low-class merchant (Choraengi), and fool (Imae). 

An interesting and unique feature among all these masks is the maneuverable chin. You can portray many emotions by changing the angle of your face to play with the audience’s view. If you tilt your head down, the shadows and placement of chin formulate a more lugubrious aspect; tilt your head up, then you see more of an elated emotion. An interesting story about Imae, a character in the assembly of masks is how he does not have a maneuverable chin. This was because the creator of these masks died while crafting Imae. The legend states how the emperor’s daughter desired to meet and see the man who was rumored to craft these amazing masks. The minute the two met eye contact, they both fell to the ground. Dead. Quite a pleasant story in my opinion. If you couldn’t tell by the tone of my voice which is more often than not incorrectly portrayed through means of text, I am being very sarcastic.

But by digging deeper into this masked dance, we don’t only see its spiritual intentions, we see that this means of performance is for satirical entertainment and to shed light on certain issues that took place in this community. In the mask museum, we saw how many masks were gruesome in their conveyance of corruption - red worts and scars to symbolize evils. We also saw how some masks had red dots, alluding to the times when people suffered from smallpox - another problem those in that time period had to face. 

A key difference between this type of theatre and other types of theatre, moreover, is the interaction made between the actor and the audience. This theatre embraced audience involvement to a maximum extent. Though the actors had a general story line that they had to follow, most of the show involved asking the audience who would like the buy the cow’s testicles and going around and asking for scraps of money. The audience could yell out something and the actors would react. It was quite interesting as this kind of theatre, except for maybe in improv, is not really prominent in western culture (or at least from what I’ve experienced). 

I would finally like to touch up on the physical aspects of this form of physical theatre. We experienced many things that Mark Hill taught us, proximity to the audience, using vision and architecture to create meaning, and violent articulation. But, what I really did not expect from this simple form of ‘dance’ was the arduous work your muscles had to endure to portray a certain character. Energy level 5 is right. To get the movement and grace of your arms to correspond with the steps of your feet were not hard to grasp instantaneously. Simple it may look, but in actuality, I’d rather be doing ballet... No I wouldn’t. But, both are hard. 

 

I feel like I grew so much throughout this trip. My knowledge of what kinds of theatre expanded through the museum and I feel like I am so much more open to the unfamiliar. I now know that Korean theatre, to my surprise, can in fact be entertaining. Beauty is difficult to explain. But when you see it, you know it’s there. I feel like someone said something along these lines to me at some point in my life, but I just can’t really remember who it was. We experienced so much beauty this weekend. I experienced the beautiful nature of the individuals in the theatre class, the antique village, the scenery and the culture (including mask dance) that I remained oblivious to all my life as a Korean. I take with me, not only friendships and bonds that I’ve made with others, but beautiful experiences that remain in my mind still. Thank you Mrs. Moon, Mr. Moon, Mr. Dornbach and Mrs. Dornbach for making this excursion possible! 

Here are a few photos to encompass the beauty that we faced (Creds to Emma and Joel for the photos) 

I just want to say for this photo that I love old people and everything about them. They are amazing. And a photo like this just makes me want to cry. The effort the put into their lives is inspiring. How connected they are to their cultural roots is inspiring. 

PS: I just realized how I started off with a chronological blog post, then changed it so that it would not have any chronological sense whatsoever. The sequence of the events at Andong go: walk, sleep, walk, lecture, movement lesson, lunch, show, walk around. Or at least something like that. 
PPS: Videos of Talchum to come.